Gordon Liu

Organizational Learning and Marketing Capability Development: A Study of the Charity Retailing Operations of British Social Enterprise

Social enterprise is a hybrid form of profit- and social benefit–seeking organization whereby traditional nonprofit organizations pursue both their social mission and business opportunities. To embrace this new strategic direction shift, the nonprofit organizations need to develop new competences that will enable them to respond to the changes in the business model. The article investigates the learning mechanisms through which social enterprises develop a marketing capability to deploy their resources in the marketplace as the drivers of competitive advantage in their commercial practice. We study eight cases of U.K.-based charity retailers to address the role of knowledge accumulation, articulation, and codification process in the evolution of marketing capability development. We identify, among other things, that the critical process of organizational learning for social enterprise is to transfer the experience into organization-specific knowledge under the social aspects of constraints.

Cause-Related Marketing in the Retail and Finance Sectors: An Exploratory Study of the Determinants of Cause Selection and Nonprofit Alliances

Firms devote increasing funds and resources to cause-related marketing (CRM). This report seeks to uncover some of the factors that explain how firms choose between competing social causes in the development of their CRM strategy. The behavior of firms traded on the London Stock Exchange is analyzed, by highlighting regularities and patterns in CRM activities. The rationales for the observed patterns are investigated through semistructured interviews with managers employed by UK-based nonprofit organizations, financial services, and retail firms. The authors identify, among other things, differences in the nature of the “selected” social causes, the length and geographical scope of the social campaigns, and the (CRM) strategies used to implement them. It is argued that these variations may reflect differences in the organizational legitimacy pressures experienced by firms in the retail and financial services sectors.

An Investigation of Marketing Capabilities and Social Enterprise Performance in the UK and Japan

The purpose of this article is to extend the existing research on the relationship between eight different types of marketing capability and social enterprise performance. More specifically, we examine third–sector organizations that have transformed their traditional business model to become more business–like social enterprises and how these marketing capabilities influence the success of this transformation in both the UK and Japan. We identify, among other things, that not all marketing capabilities are positively associated with social enterprise performance. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that market–driven organizations must develop all types of marketing capability. We suggest that social entrepreneurs should develop their marketing capabilities selectively according to their specific performance objectives.

Strategic Orientation and Social Enterprise Performance

Even though previous research indicates that an organization’s pursuit of strategic orientation (SO) has positive effects on its performance, we have deepened and expanded our understanding of how this concept can also be applied to social enterprises (SEs). Using data collected from British and Japanese social enterprises, we examined the mediating roles of market effectiveness and consumer satisfaction in both the social and commercial domains with regard to SO effects on performance, as well as how performance in one aspect of practice positively moderates the impact of SO behavior in another. The results contribute to the development of a theory for understanding the concept of SO associated with social enterprise performance. More generally, this article contributes to the ongoing efforts to understand the strategic management aspect of social enterprises.

A study of non-profit organisations in cause-related marketing: Stakeholder concerns and safeguarding strategies

Purpose – Cause-related marketing (CRM) involves firms working in partnership with non-profit organizations (NPOs). While CRM offers a range of potential benefits to NPOs, some managers are reluctant to partake in these ventures. The purpose of this paper is to uncover their concerns and highlight what can be done to improve their experience of CRM. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses semi-structured interviews with 160 UK NPO managers and a stakeholder theory framework to document their experience of the CRM process and investigate what they can do to improve it. Findings – It identifies three types of concerns relating to issues of: organizational identity, alliance risks, and the prioritization of NPO stakeholders. The analyses also uncover a number of strategies used by NPO managers to safeguard their organisations. Research limitations/implications – By focusing not only on the measurable outcomes of CRM but also on its processes, the authors provide a more thorough analysis of CRM and its ...

The Nature of the Co-Evolutionary Process Complex Product Development in the Mobile Computing Industry’s Business Ecosystem

A business ecosystem is a community that consists of various levels of interdependent firms which co-evolve in an ongoing cycle and constantly renew themselves. By undertaking an in-depth, qualitative study of multinational companies in the mobile computing industry based in the Great China region, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we explore the nature of the co-evolutionary process and its influence on complex product development. We find that this process consists of three domains of activity: co-vision, co-design, and co-create. We also find that each domain of activity plays a different but important role in stimulating collaborative innovation for complex product development in the mobile computing industry’s business ecosystem. We also discuss the implications for theory and future research directions.

The role of internal branding in nonprofit brand management: an empirical investigation

Internal branding refers to an organization’s attempts to persuade its staff to buy-in to the organization’s brand value and transform it into a reality. Drawing from self-determination theory and leadership theory, we seek to develop a deeper understanding of the process of internal branding in the nonprofit sector. More specifically, we propose and examine the mediating effects of the staff’s emotional brand attachment, staff service involvement, and the moderating effect of charismatic leadership on the brand orientation behavior–organizational performance relationship using data obtained from the representatives of 301 nonprofit organizations in the United Kingdom. On a general level, the findings suggest that staff emotional brand attachment and staff service involvement are linked to brand orientation and organizational performance. Moreover, charismatic leadership increases the strength of this linkage. All of these findings extend the literature on internal branding.

Managing branding and legitimacy: A study of charity retail sector

Nonprofit organizations operate charity retail shops to raise the necessary funds to enable them to carry out their primary charitable purpose. This research conducts six case studies in the charity retail sector to develop the charity retail branding strategy decision pathway to link (a) “why” nonprofit senior managers choose different types of charity retail branding strategy and (b) “how” they conduct legitimation strategies accordingly to attain brand legitimacy. In the course of developing our argument, this research extends the theory of brand architecture and brand legitimacy by articulating their application in third sector retailing practice. These findings will also be useful for senior managers when making branding decisions and designing legitimation strategies to attain brand legitimacy.

A Typology of Guanxi-Based Governance Mechanisms for Knowledge Transfer in Business Networks of Chinese Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Guanxi has strong implications for interactions among individuals in Chinese society. This study investigates guanxi-based governance mechanisms in the context of knowledge transfer among Chinese small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. We analyze, in-depth, qualitative interview data gathered from 78 Chinese engineers who work for Chinese small and medium-sized die-casting manufacturers. Our findings reveal that guanxi influences the production of three forms of guanxi-enabled trust: guanxi-enabled relational trust, calculative trust, and institutional trust. By combining these forms of trust, we generate a typology of seven guanxi-based governance mechanisms for knowledge transfer—“guanxi-hu,” “huibao,” “lun,” “gan-qing,” “jiao-qing,” “ren-qing,” and “mianzi.” We discuss the research and managerial implications of our findings.

Overcoming the liability of smallness by recruiting through networks in China: a guanxi-based social capital perspective

Abstract We investigate the role of guanxi in Chinese entrepreneurial firms’ recruitment practices in attempting to overcome the liability of smallness. Combining insights from the social capital and guanxi literature, we theorize the guanxi-based social capital perspective and use it to analysis 96 in-depth interviews with multiple members (entrepreneurs, senior managers and factory workers) from 15 die-casting entrepreneurial firms in Guangdong province, China. We find that the use of guanxi in recruitment practice can overcome the liability of smallness because it makes the hiring process more convenient, improves firms’ attractiveness to jobseekers and enhances the person-organizational fit between new hires and firms. We discuss how Chinese entrepreneurs and their senior managers use guanxi strategically to achieve these advantages. On the other hand, our findings suggest that jobseekers can also use guanxi to increase their options, improve their bargaining power and distract firms’ attention away from hiring the most appropriate candidate for the job in order to undermine the effectiveness of Chinese entrepreneurial firms’ recruitment procedures. We explore the implications of these findings for academic research and managerial practice.